Jeremy Lin is One of the Fastest in the League

People have always described Jeremy Lin has “deceptively quick”. Take that however you want, but I’ve always been impressed at how fast he can push the ball down the court after a defensive stop. So, I was pretty shocked at some numbers and evidence I’ve found that suggests he’s actually one of the fastest guards in the league.

The first piece I read that gave this claim some footing is this SI article called Money Ballsy. In it, Morey reveals that:

The Rockets embed accelerometers in their players’ jerseys during practice, and while Lin is far and away the quickest-accelerating, Harden isn’t among the top three.

(slightly off-topic here but I found this next tidbit just as interesting):

the Rockets were the first NBA team to install SportVU, which is based on Israeli missile-tracking technology and uses tiny webcams installed in an arena’s rafters to record the X/Y coordinates of each player 72,000 times a game. This leads to an ocean of data that allows teams to determine, for example, how many dribbles a player takes in a game or how efficient a shooter is when a defender is four feet away versus one.

Well, having the fastest acceleration on the Rockets is nice, but how about some hard numbers? According to this SLAM article, Lin has the highest average speed, the second fastest start speed and the second fastest top speed. This would suggest he’s in the same league as Kyrie Irving, John Wall, and Derrick Rose in terms of speed…

AVERAGE SPEED

Jeremy Lin: 16.66 mph

Derrick Rose: 16.60 mph

John Wall: 16.48 mph

Kyrie Irving: 15.67 mph

Lin wins this battle.

START SPEED

Lin: 13.93 mph

Wall: 13.25 mph

Irving: 12.64 mph

For Rose, BAM has only average speed data.

Lin wins this battle too.

TOP SPEED

Lin: 18.85 mph

Wall: 19.30 mph

Irving: 18.74 mph

Lin comes in second to Wall.

And here’s more on this BAM stat that measures a player’s speed: Source

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One response to “Jeremy Lin is One of the Fastest in the League”

He’s not deceptively quick, he’s just quick, but people don’t want to believe that he is, so they say he’s deceptively quick. Well, as he said himself, what is so deceptive, he’s running right in front of you, can’t you see?